For Whom Swallowed the Sun
by everbodyislookingforsomething
Summary: He is learning to let go, and she is learning to hold on. Neither of them feel like they're standing on steady ground, but hey- that's what friends bond over, right?
1. Chapter 1

**Bee Cave, Texas**

 **1965**

That was the way of things, he supposed.

It was a saying that had gotten him through many a conflict that couldn't be resolved by fighting-hell, he now viewed those as the easy kind. It was simple enough to take a gun and duke out whatever squabble was taking up valuable testosterone. It was the kind with words, with deep, ore-laced conflicts that ran through the ground and transcended generations and found their way into new blood. It was the kind with somebody just being so stubborn. It was the kind with somebody above you, better than you, who could treat you like shit on his boot and you just had to take it. His ma was the one that told him, originally, rocking in her big chair and rolling yarn into balls the cat would go to town on later.

"Sometimes, Dell, that's just the way of things." she would say in her seen-it-all voice, patient and everlasting as the bedrock under their feet. "Ain't no use worrying yourself over things you can't change."

How he wished for his ma's wisdom, as everlasting as his immortal memory of her in his mind. Lord hope that one day he would attain it. He drew upon it when there wasn't anything he could fix about something wrong, because that was what he did(fixing) and it was about the most frustrating thing when he couldn't fix something. Eleven hard-science PhDs and the concept that was hardest for him to grasp was letting go.

Letting go. That was what he was here to do, after all.

The same floorboards that had creaked underfoot when he'd sat here, years ago, on that cushioned stool next to his ma's rocking chair. It had been long since he'd seen her, too long, _really_ seen her. When her eyes were open and she could hold a conversation, even if it was a short and faint one. He came as soon as his father called. But by then they all knew it was too late. _Preparing to grieve_ , the doctor had called it, encouraging the family to start packing her things, settling her affairs. So when she died they would be ready. Her presence would be gone from the house and they wouldn't come home to a cold bed and pristine sheets, the way Dell could tell his father made it. His ma always left the little frilly pillow in the front crooked, like someone had just gotten up. She had told him once it seemed more homely that way, and he wholeheartedly believed her. She was the embodiment of hospitality and making things look like they should, like her cornbread that looked straight off the cover of a southern living magazine.

His father couldn't bring himself to remove her rocking chair, then. It stood tilted in its same spot, frozen in time, an ageless thing preserved in amber light that filtered through the hand-hemmed curtains. There was no dust on it even though it hadn't been used for a very long time. The cat avoided it, even, curling up next to the yarn basket instead, halfheartedly batting some threads. Bee Cave was hard for him to come back to. What he would give to have it echo memories of his mother, of fireflies and lemonade, of summers on the porch swing. It was just the way of things, he supposed, that his father had turned this place into a hollow shell of itself. Dell's mother was the thing that brightened it and without her the life was sucked out of the land. Lord, wheat had never looked so not like sunshine.

There was a noise on the porch. Stamping boots, scraping against the bristly doormat that still said _home sweet home,_ past all the crud that was caked on it. The clatter as the screen opened and shut.

"Son," said his father gruffly in greeting, hanging his bag on the row of hooks that waited for him. "You came."

"Of course I came, dad, I've been coming."

They stared at each other for a second, and the warm breeze carrying the smell of honeysuckle on it drifted through the screen and into the house.

"You're tracking mud." Dell pointed. "Didn't scrape hard enough, I guess."

"Never is hard enough for your ma."

"Was." Dell corrected him. He watched his father's eyes flick anywhere around the room but his own face. "We're supposed to be grieving."

"She ain't gone yet." came a firm correction of its own. "Let's set in the kitchen. I didn't call you down here just because she's in hospice."

The kitchen, the thing that most breathed life of his mother, was cold and smelled like cleaner. Artificial. Clinical. Too much like the hospital. The fridge hummed. It wasn't the same one that had been here when he had last visited, a month or two ago, stopping by the house to pick up his mother some warm socks. Well, it _was_ the same fridge, but it had so many things stuck to it it was barely recognizable. Dell ached for the oven light to flick on like some sign she was still there with them. It remained dark, and his father obscured his view of it when he took a seat. Dell focused on the red plaid tea towel curtains above the sink instead, going stonelike in the chair as he remembered seeing his ma's glowing cheeks through that window as he played outside, tinkering around with metal scraps.

"Dell. Your ma. She wrote to you, and told me I was to read you the contents if something happened to her. I intended on waiting until...but those were her words and wishes, then, you know some of her last conscious words to me were about you? Figures. Anyway, let's see…"

Dell was not sure if he was supposed to hear this, and pretended he didn't, gazing at the ceiling fan that looked quite like a plucked and wilted daisy.

"My son...stuff like that…" There was a pregnant pause. "Listen. I'll give this to you to read yourself later. How about I just give you the gist so you can get going on with your life? It was her wish for you to inherit land. She knew you didn't want nothing to do with this family. So it's far, Dell, far away from here. House and barn already on it. Yours to do with what you wish. Happy eleventh PhD."

It was the way of things, he supposed, that he was just so damn tired of correcting his dad that he said nothing and let himself be badgered. The only person that would defend him-or rather, never even have to defend him because his dad would never start this crap when she was around-wasn't here. Wouldn't be here. "All right. I'll thank her later today."

And he would, placing fresh flowers in the vase next to her new bed, the bed that many people had died in before her, the bed she would die in. She looked so fragile, cheekbones jutting out like icebergs, beautiful wheat-sunshine hair turned lackluster grey and thin against the pillow. There were many flowers and many cards. Dell held his own hands and kissed her on the forehead and thanked her. Her eyes did not open and they never would again.

Dell did not stick around to wait for his father to begrudgingly offer him his childhood room to stay in for the night. He stood on the packed earth, next to the porch swing with its sunken pillows, and called his landlord to inform him he would need to find a new tenant. On the way out of Bee Cave, his truck kicking up so much dust it obscured the rear view that he did not want to look in, Dell thought for not the first time of the things he would say to his father if he had the energy. He'd said those things before, when he was younger and angrier. It was not the first time he'd wondered if his father remembered them. The feud that had lasted between them had aged over the years, badly, growing diseased and pockmarked. It was withering now, he sensed-while he was doing the very thing his father despised, moving away and not tending to the family land or following in his exact footsteps-he'd finally be far away, not making terse calls about when he was going to visit his mother. He'd be gone. Out of his father's life, and their battle could die.

The things he wished to tell his father, the relationship Dell yearned for them to have. It was just the way of things, he supposed, that it couldn't be. It was just the way of things that his favorite person in the world had to go on and get sick and lay in a bed with the veins in her pale, thin wrist jabbed at all day. It was just the way of things that in the end, she still understood him, and let it go that while she actually agreed with his father she tried to understand and gave him what he wanted. She was a saint. She was who he wanted around, not the person occupying her space who didn't know how to leave the pillows like someone had just gotten up.

It was just the way of things, he supposed.


	2. Chapter 2

**New York**

 **1965**

A tangerine, dented a little but fragrant and vividly sunset orange, was dropped on the concrete next to Constance with a _thud_. Seth watched her eat it. She was so fucking weird, rubbing it good with the corner of her blouse, on the underside where no one could see if a bit of something came off. She would peel it with her long fingernails and place the things he would discard on her tongue like cookies in an oven, savoring them, closing her eyes.

"Weirdo." he scoffed for the millionth time that year, reaching down to take a sliver of the fruit for himself.

Something muffled escaped past the peels.

"So bitter, I don't know how you stand it."

"Sounds a lot like you." she responded, opening her eyes. Seth laughed, like a shot going off, and then it was quiet again.

"That's funny, you know? Funny." He settled down on the concrete steps next to Constance and gazed out into the yard. It was winter, marshmallow season as the two of them called it, watching all the little kids go by to the school down the block stuffed into so many layers it made them waddle. The yard of the high school was big, lots of room to roam around, but it was stuffed full of kids. They'd gotten yelled at the first few times they'd had lunch out back by the staff parking lot, next to the unloading bay for supply trucks and stuff. The segregated parking lot for the segregated staff. Not officially, of course, just all the teachers too good to share with the janitors. But they never made any trouble, and soon people stopped yelling at them. It was a great lunch spot, and the jutting overhand over the steps kept them out of the weather. There was a little yard, covered with snow now, and an adolescent tree. A little ways off, the parking lot. It was quiet outside, and Seth didn't make a comment as Constance brought out her lunch. He'd stopped making comments when she got worked up enough to sock him for it. Deserved it, he did, and when she sobered up real quick for being yelled at by her parents on account of her damaging her nice little hands he understood it was his fault even more. It was when he started bringing her tangerines from the bush in his yard. They had an agreement, him and Constance, that if he died she would inherit the tangerine bush.

"How'd your meeting with McBitch go?"

It brought a wan smile to her cheeks. A weak one, but it was there. Seth smiled back even though she was looking at the tangerine, fingers cupped around it like it was a cup of coffee.

"She gonna tell your parents?"

"I suppose so. I'll be in for it when I get home."

"Sucks."

"It is my fault."

He didn't have anything good to say for that. In a couple minutes, wedging a ham sandwich between his lips with the grip of a vice, he took out a beaten composition notebook and a pencil. Constance lowered her little metal spoon discreetly. He sketched for a while, the two of them sitting in silence.

"What is that?"

"It's supposed to be the tree, asshole-"

"No, I meant that. The writing."

Seth scrubbed his noise. It was beginning to drip from the cold seeping in through his threadbare jacket. "Oh. I dunno. Sometimes I just write stuff I feel and think of, you know? Either or." He glanced down to the notebook. When she didn't reply his eyes flicked back up to hers like changing traffic lights and saw a funny sort of expression he'd never seen before.

"Don't make fun of me! You're the one that's weird." Seth grumbled.

"I don't think it's weird. I've just never heard of it before. A whole notebook just for thoughts."

"Well, yeah. A journal, or something. Try it."

Constance walked home as she always did, pristine rubber boots tamping down fresh snow on the sidewalk. Her mother used to insist on sending someone to come get her, but it took so long with traffic and all she just preferred to walk. It was some of the only time she had to herself. At school, even with Seth-there was always someone. At home, even up in her room with the door that _must_ remain open-there was always someone, looming over her shoulder to make sure she was practicing piano and doing her spelling neat enough. It was the only time she could let her shoulders slouch. Careful, now, to make sure she didn't scuff her boots.

Constance thought about the notebook.

She thought of something of her very own, where she could write her deepest thoughts and no one would find it or read it. Where could she stash it where the maid wouldn't find it and dutifully report it to her father? She envisioned her mother's cold, pointed lilac manicure closing claw-like around her wrist. Around the notebook. Throwing it into the fire.

Almost home, she stilled outside a bookstore, listened with one ear to the bustle instead. She thought about the notebook.

Constance decided against it.


	3. Chapter 3

It was an awful lot of land, Dell observed, stepping down from the cabin of his truck onto the loose dirt. It puffed up around his ankles in a miniature mushroom cloud, settling on the sensible steel-toed boots he'd chosen to carry him through college. His dad had been right-there was a house and barn already on the expanse of land, leaning into each other like two tired old dogs.

Dell looked around, hands on hips.

There was the cattle fence as far as he could see, attached to an old ranch-style gate that he had had to get out of his truck to open. Dusty ground mingling with close-cropped straw and dead grass. Behind the structures there was a field of corn, somehow still alive although he'd gotten the impression no one had been on this property in a while. The house was two stories, a cute little blue ranch-style place, and the barn, painted a passive grey. Above all of it, the Texas sun blazing as hot as a poker. It was hard to believe it was his. It wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind, what he would have chosen if his ma had handed him a stack of cash and asked him to pick his own place, but he couldn't complain. It reminded him of home, where he'd just been, without a certain influence looming over everything like ceiling mold. Dell saw his ma in the little flower boxes outside the window and the watering can holding the barn door ajar. He let a smile disrupt the dust settled in the cracks on his face. It was what she had wanted, and he would make it what he wanted, too.

The house surprised him by being already furnished, mysterious shapes draped in white. Dell supposed the last owners hadn't wanted to make the effort to take much with them, which was just fine by him, considering the small town of Oxskull he'd driven through on his way here didn't appear to have a furniture store. The taps seemed to hesitate before spitting out water and the windows squeaked terribly when he opened them in an effort to air out the house. A thick layer of dust coated it all. It was a proper mausoleum of someone's life. Dell shrugged to himself. He tied a cloth around his mouth and nose and fetched the broom.

By the time the sun was setting, his back was aching and he was sweating like a leaky radiator. He'd managed to fix the house up the best he could-all the dust was out, at least, and the furniture undraped. He'd cleaned the layers of grime off of everything and made sure the gas was still working on the stove. Dell was aching to look inside the barn, and kept glancing at it whenever he passed a window on the side of the house that revealed a little snippet of gray. Things to do first, he reminded himself, although his fingers were itching something fierce.

There was someone supposed to be coming by, a man by the name of Lawrence at the general store, who was taking him enough food to fill the kitchen and supplies they both figured the house wouldn't have. Dell had asked about the old owners and only got a shrug and a half-hearted answer that made him believe they'd either been social outcasts or died in some scandalous way. It was getting later and later, as the rooster clock in the kitchen told him, still ticking after all of its time alone in this house, the only thing alive other than the mice. He got rather tired of waiting.

Dell fetched his flashlight out of his truck. Lord, it was dark outside, a sort of pitch black he'd never seen in the city. It would be best to put up some lights so he didn't trip and kill himself in the dark, out here where no one would find him for a while.

"Stop that." he said to himself, firmly, and laughed a little. "Just what dad would want."

Waving the beam of the flashlight like a sweeping lighthouse, he made his way to the barn, and nearly punted the watering can holding the door open. The rattling sound it made against the wood made him jump a mile.

"Lord," he said, waiting for his heart to stop feeling like it was about to leap out of his chest, and kept going.

It had used to hold livestock, that was for sure, maybe horses. But now it was cleared out and a pile of farming equipment remained in one corner, with a pitchfork and gardening supplies on the far wall. It was spacious enough for two vehicles, and Dell made a mental note to himself to check the newspaper for the weather and park the truck in here. A few bales of hay, of course, and-

The same rattling noise. Fear jumping into his throat like a terrified frog, Dell swung himself and the flashlight beam around back to the direction he had come. Light filled a ruddy face looking rather bewildered in the doorway.

"What are you doing out here in the dark, Mr. Conagher?"

Dell chuckled to himself. When had he become jumpy, like a trigger-happy old man patrolling his garden in the dark? "You sure gave me a fright, Lawrence."

"Sorry. Thought you'd heard me. I couldn't get the gate open, so I walked the rest of the way."

"The latch is kind of sticky. Sorry. Should've mentioned it."

"It's no problem, Mr. Conagher. Sticky gates aside, how are you liking the property?"

"Just fine, thanks. Reminds me of my ma, for sure."

"She live nearby?"

"No. She's passed."

"I'm sorry to hear it, Mr. Conagher. I have all your things."

"Thanks for coming out all this way. And please, call me Dell."

"No problem at all." Lawrence gave a gruff smile. Dell kept close to him as they trudged back to the gate and helped him unload the idling truck. Dell liked Lawrence, he supposed, he seemed to be a man that had a sole purpose in life to run the general store, and run it well, and stuck to it. He didn't seem to be one for rumors, so Dell avoided asking him any more questions about the property or its old owners. When he waved goodbye to Lawrence and finished stacking the last crate of tools in the barn by himself, Dell muffled a yawn and trudged back to the house.

He paused, flashlight beam settling patiently on the steps he was about to tread on.

A muddy footprint much larger than his own was on one of the steps. _Lawrence_ , he thought to himself, _must have gone looking for me in the house first_. It was a slow thought that rose hazily to his mind after fighting through the quicksand of fear, and Dell shook his head. "Won't do no good to be skittish out here," he told himself, and made his way with a purpose upstairs. He lay awake in the new-old bed for a long time, reading an almanac that had been left in the barn. When he finally shut off the light and listened to the crickets on the warm breeze coming in through the window, Dell burrowed inside of the quilt and closed his eyes. It was his house, his barn. It was his house. It was now his house.

When his eyes snapped open past midnight to the far-off howling of a coyote, he knew it was going to be a long night.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey, Constance," Lauretta said softly, standing exactly in the center of her doorframe. "Hey, are you awake?"

"No." came the muffled answer, from someone who was decidedly awake and choosing to ignore the world under two quilts.

Lauretta moved softly across the snow-white carpet. She was fairly new here, in the Harlow house, this was only her second year, but she felt she had known Constance her whole lifetime. There was something pitiful about the Harlow girl, who existed in this world like a bleak shelf for her parents to push piano lessons onto. When she started she had seen right through Constance, who wore the best mask everyday she had ever seen, and it had taken a while for her to catch the girl in the act of breaking her perfect facade for the two to become friends.

It hurt her soul to watch this girl.

"I got the mail from James. I think this is your report card. I can buy you some time, say I misplaced it, but not long."

There was no response.

"What are you struggling with in school? I know I'm just a maid, but I graduated, you know." she pressed.

There was no response.

"Constance, please. Tell me what's going on. It isn't like you to fail at anything."

There was no response.

"I'll hide it in the dumbwaiter." Lauretta turned to go.

"Let them see it," she heard, from a voice that sounded like it was coming out from underwater. "I don't care."

"You do care. You do. It's okay to have a hard time with school-"

"Go away. Go away, Lauretta."

Stung, the maid paused at the door.

"I know they're going to yell, Constance, but don't think for one minute you're not smart. Please, ask for help if you need it. It's important to stay on top of your studies."

She was gone before she saw the girl raise a bleary head from under the quilt, eyes shining like river gemstones.

* * *

They yelled. Oh, they yelled.

Lauretta lowered the tea towel every single time the glass in the china cabinet rattled, and hunched her shoulders like she was the one in trouble. The cook shook her head and continued peeling potatoes. There was a party tonight, where all of Mr. and Mrs. Harlow's esteemed friends would come over and laugh their tinkly laughs, and hold their children in front of them all trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys. Lauretta knew that Mrs. Harlow would scrub Constance's face with a washcloth like she always did, points of her lavender manicure pressing into the girl's shoulder, and put her into this dress that looked like a medieval contraption. Then Constance would be kicked underfoot if her smile's wattage wasn't high enough, and they would all eat hors d'oeuvres, and laugh the tinkly laugh.

Another house she had worked at, the Adlers, when the little boy had done something wrong they would put on these great downturned mouths and go, "Oh, he isn't feeling well tonight, he's just taking a nap." and the little Adler would have a mini, genuine downturned mouth, clutching the banister and watching the party and the platters of chilled oysters go by. But the Harlows used these parties as punishment for Constance, she knew, screaming at her until their throats were raw and then becoming the most gracious parents in the world. It made her heart ache. It was creepy, the first time she saw it, Constance smiling what she thought was genuinely at another boy her age and then rounding the corner into the kitchen and the expression dropping like rain off a window, just gone, this look of utter vacancy replacing it.

Lauretta would tell her mother about it on the days she was off, curled up in her big bed while the train rattled by the window. "Rich folk are as closest to aliens we're ever gonna get," her mother would say, and stroke her hair.

She wished she could help Constance, and she tried. When the Harlows were out they practiced mathematics and history. Lauretta's head would ache, trying to remember these things, but she felt a pit of worry gnawing in her stomach that she had to at least try. She wished there was more she could do for the girl, be her friend outside of this house she saw as a prison. Whenever Constance got home from school she was so drained, acting in a way Lauretta had never seen before, that she was just too tired to talk. Constance used to live for Lauretta's gossip, about her mother's friends and her on-again-off-again boyfriend, but now she didn't take any interest, avoiding her homework and sinking into the bed that was like a cloud.

So before the Harlows got home, Lauretta would sit next to Constance on the bed, pressed and starched apron brushing the tops of her knees, and work on the girl's homework. She would ask her questions, what's so-and-so divided by so-and-so, and would chew on the eraser and do it herself. If she didn't know what was going on with Constance, if the girl wouldn't talk to her anymore no matter how much she asked, at least she could be her friend, and help her avoid the yelling that would surely make it worse.

One day they were working on spelling, and Lauretta had brought some cornbread that her mother had sent over with her. The Harlows weren't permitted to see it. The last time she had brought fried chicken and they had asked the cook what 'that food' was doing in their kitchen, and so Lauretta kept it to herself and the staff. She had made it for Constance the way she'd had it as a child, with lots of honey and butter, the heart attack way, and did Constance's spelling around the girl feeding herself sad, pitiful bites of honey-soaked food.

"Arachnid." Lauretta mused to herself. "Which one...B. That's it."

Constance's hand crept out of its cave under the quilts and reached for her fingers. Lauretta held the hot ones in her cold ones, clutching it tight, and waited.

"I wish I could come live with you." Constance said softly, and Lauretta raised her face to the ceiling to blink back thick tears.


	5. Chapter 5

A week later, the property was barely recognizable.

Dell had given everything a fresh coat of paint, and the two structures gleamed for miles. The land was watered, and weak grass and flowery weeds started to crop up around the barn, which was outfitted with workbenches enough toolkits to supply a space station. It felt like home, now, everything clean and dusted and just the right amount of disarray. He had grant money left over from his latest research project that he'd presented to graduate, toolboxes that could have machinery unfold from the inside out. It was a rather nice routine, waking up with the sun, having his coffee and leaving the tv to drone and only the screen door open while he worked in the barn.

Lawrence visited, off and on, and Dell grew to like him quite a lot. He was always bringing things that Dell needed right before he could put his finger on it, and interesting little projects. Slowly, Lawrence was indoctrinating him into the town of Oxskull. He'd helped around seven people so far, just little projects to pass the time, things he could do with his hands and knowledge and machinery. It wasn't a real job, but it was something he loved to do until he could figure the career part out. Lawrence was the one that brought him a goodie basket from one of the older ladies in town whose fence he'd electrified to keep out the coyotes. It warmed his heart to see it. He'd gotten used to the coyotes baying at night, just like the town had gotten used to the man who Lawrence vouched for, the one who was probably smarter than all of them combined and brought machinery into a town that was mostly still sleepy in that area. He had to thank Lawrence for it, as Dell wasn't sure if he'd ever have been able to get work in the first place, with the way that people were a bit nervous around him and his metal, so he made Lawrence a little scanner that rang like a bell whenever someone entered his shop, and gave him a little icon on a reader in the back of who it was so he knew whether to get up quickly or not. It was becoming a good life.

He'd been in Oxskull for a few months when the first letter came.

 _Residents of Oxskull,_ it read in prim script, _if you have not yet electrified your fence, please contact Dell Conagher at…_

Dell was still scanning it, welding goggles glinting in the afternoon sun, when Lawrence's truck eased up to the gate.

"Not electrified yet, is it?" The man called to him with a wide grin, climbing down from the cabin. "Look atcha! On the county's roster as the go-to man."

"Do they know why the coyote problem is getting worse?"

Lawrence shook his head. "Getting more bold, they are, attacking livestock. I heard an old fellow two towns over died...well, not from the coyotes. Was running around in the middle of the goddamn night like a possum, tripped on his rake."

"Lord. I'll be busy."

"Better than idle," Lawrence mused, and gently kicked a toolbox. "Fancy contraption. Well, if you need me to order anything for you, just let me know."

"Will do. How's the store?"

"Fine. Just fine, thanks."

"Could it be better?"

"It's just a little thing, really. Have you met Marie Fortifan down the road? She has two boys. Both in juvenile detention. They got out the other day, you see, and are taking up old habits."

"Uh huh," Dell prompted.

"Loitering around the store and such. Petty theft. You know the type. I can barely get anything done, my eye on the scanner the whole day. Maybe I'll send them the way of your electric fence."

They both laughed, hands on their stomachs.

"I should be getting back. Let me know if anything goes missing." Lawrence added, seriously.

"Will do." Dell said, and lifted a few fingers in a wave as Lawrence got back in his truck, kicking up a furious dust storm back on the way he had come.


	6. Chapter 6

It was one of the first times she had ever felt something real and ugly, and so it would forever be cemented into her memory as her being dragged by the ankle into this world, the real world, where people were forced to feel things. The whole way to school she had wished to escape through the air vents in the car onto the slush-filled street below. With every punctuated word in her mother's high, shrill voice, Constance felt the burns forming and wounds opening on her back. When she was young, she used to feel something boiling in the pit of her stomach, questing to get out and be heard, but that had been shaken out of her like every other emotion.

"It's like, are you _stupid_? Have you been cheating in school this whole time and got caught just now? Constance, you're supposed to be smart. I'm not paying this much for you to be stupid."

That was a question, then. Constance let her head recline against the seat and pondered it. She had learned to memorize, all right, to spit things back out as they had been taught to her. Lauretta was intelligent. She had all of these tips and tricks for spelling she'd figured out for Constance, and had a instinctual way with cooking where she knew if things were done by smelling them or if something was going to curdle. But Constance didn't have that. She had nothing like that. She just memorized and played piano, which was really just more memorizing. She couldn't write her own music or anything. Maybe she really was dumb. There was this district initiative where they should ask questions on tests that really made you think, and it wasn't something you could memorize to prepare for, and she had failed the statewide testing. Those results Lauretta could not delay.

" _So what if you're dumb?"_ Seth had said, when he called her house after school one day and she didn't feel like talking much. " _I'm dumb. My dad is dumb. But we're happy. We're dumb together. You and I can be dumb together._ "

He found her in the bathroom, dabbing a scraped knee with some soaked paper towels.

"You're not supposed to be in here," she said, thickly.

"Screw that. What happened? Let me, let me help."

"Seth." she said.

"You've gotten blood on your pants. Ripped them, too. Your mom is gonna be mad."

"Seth." she said.

"Shut up. Let me help you. Let's go to the nurse."

It hit her then as he tried to pull her up with his weak arms off the tile, a heavy feeling in her throat and chest and head, her mother yelling and making her feel like a turtle inside of its shell because what she'd said right before Constance got out of the car was just _cruel_ , she still couldn't believe it, and she'd tripped on a rock and scraped her knee and made eye contact with her mother through the window and then she just drove away as Constance sat on the ground and blood welled out of her knee. It hit her then, and she howled.

"What, what's wrong? Constance, you're scaring me."

"She said," she started, choking on her own breath, "She said I can't hang out with you anymore."

Seth went still.

 _It's that boy, isn't it, the one that's always calling my house asking for you. I've seen him in his ratty clothes and those teeth. He's no good, and now he's influencing you to stray from your studies, and be a vagrant like him and his family. Do you want that, Constance? Do you want that life under a bridge? He's no good. I don't want you two hanging around anymore, do you hear me? If I catch you with that boy, you'll really get it. I'll tell the principal. I'm serious. Keep away from people like him, and find other friends._

"Oh."

She felt like something in her eyes had burst, she was like a broken faucet, and like she was going to throw up. Constance blindly clung to Seth, to the holes in his shirt, and cried for fifteen years of life.


	7. Chapter 7

There was a prickly feeling starting on the back of his neck, like twenty mosquitos settling down for a feast, and Dell hurriedly wiped some of the cold sweat away.

"Just misplaced it." he muttered to himself. "Just misplaced it, that's all."

 _Let me know if anything goes missing._

He was being silly. Paranoid. His workbench was crowded, after all, the blueprints to the toolboxes were probably just under some welding goggles or wrench prototype. They could have fallen behind the table, or maybe he took them into the house and forgot about it.

Dell knew it wasn't any of those things. Those blueprints were his pride and joy, his capstone, not an old scrap of napkin he would scratch his head and do equations on. They were kept in a cylinder that hung exactly in the middle of the cabinet he kept all finished blueprints in, sealed and dated and labeled, he could visualize where it had been in his mind. There were a few other things gone, too, but they were replaceable compared to this. He wasn't an idiot. There were other copies, those were just the originals. But it was one of the most valuable things he owned. A layman, just looking at it, probably wouldn't understand how to put it together. So it must have been someone that knew what they were, their value, someone that had either tracked him all the way from his university or figured out who he was. Dell felt ill. He was trying to keep a quiet life.

"I could have misplaced them," he said to himself, alone in the vast barn.

* * *

"Hey, Dell." Lawrence said comfortably, looking up from his newspaper.

"Hey." Dell answered, sliding onto the barstool next to him.

"Getcha anything?" asked the friendly bartender.

"Uh, a beer. Please. Thanks. Yeah."

Lawrence looked at him sideways. "You all right, Dell?"

"Fine."

"You're sweating like a stuck pig." his friend observed, pulling Dell's own handkerchief out of his overall pocket and handing it to him. "Sure you should be out of bed if you've got a fever?"

"It's not that."

"What, then?'

Dell decidedly waited until his beer was on the counter and the bartender had sidled away.

"Something of mine was taken, Lawrence. Something very important to me. I'd no idea I should have put it under better security than something out of the weather. No one would rightly... _should_ know what it means. What it means to me, and literally. Not in another language or anything, but practically..."

"Those damn kids." his friend's barstool shot backwards with a sharp _screech_ , and Lawrence slammed his beer down on the counter. "I've had it-"

"Wait. Wait, Lawrence. I appreciate the sentiment. But really, I'm baffled. To the layman, it's…" Dell gesticulated. "Gibberish. They couldn't have known what it really was."

"So you think someone paid them to grab it."

"I really have no idea. I'm just asking for an extra eye out for it, is all."

"No worries, Dell. I'll even inform the sheriff. We'll get your blueprints back."

"Thanks, friend," he said, and took a welcome swig of his chilly beer.


	8. Chapter 8

She was squeezing her manicured carefully almond-shaped fingernails so hard into her palm blood was welling up around the existing salmon pink. _This was a mistake._ It was instinctual, primal, to run. But she hadn't gone far, like an idiot, and now she was looking over her shoulder every five seconds for the police her mother had surely called. Constance had never been here before, under the big steel bridge where the cars screamed like stuck pigs when they roared overhead. The muddy river hung low and thin, grudging along, lining the homeless camps that had been taken down and put back up countless times. Seth had said, once, that he had an uncle there. Of course there was no way she knew what he looked like. But when she needed to run for some reason she felt like it might be the one place she'd never been that her mother would never find her.

 _Keep moving_. People were staring at her. She could have handled insults, but they just stood there and looked at her go by like she was being pushed by a strong wind. Too fast to really intake faces, Constance swept her eyes over eyes, looking for a hint of an older Seth in a face. She found it in the maw of a toothless old woman, who smiled at her and raised a chipped mug.

"Are you lost, honey?"

 _Would they call the police on me? Probably not_.

She kept going.

It was summer. It was supposed to feel exciting and fresh and new.

Constance had run like she'd never before like a bat out of hell, leaving the receiver dangling from its cradle in her tepid home.

" _...Constance? Constance?"_ The advisor was endlessly repeating.

 _Constance, you stupid dumb bitch, how could you fail your exams and even have the nerve to be alive, how do you have the nerve to exist_.

She knew the word her mother would scream at her. It was probably the same thing Lauretta would ask her, in a different tone of voice. _Why? Why?_ She didn't know. She had just failed. She had just failed.

Seth failed things all the time.

Constance had Satan incarnate waiting for her at home, with its icy lilac manicure, and its shrieking, and its forced-upon-her music lessons, and its hors d'oeuvres. It was so terrifying in that moment that the scratches on her arm from the lilac manicure seemed to glow poker-hot, and it had just spread to her feet, and she had just run. Her mother used to tell her that running away would never solve anything. At school, they said it was because your problems don't go away no matter how fast you run. At home, her mother said it was for all kinds of reasons.

I wouldn't even have the time to look for you.

I wouldn't look for you if you're going to waste my time in the first place.

If you want to run away so badly, then you should be allowed to try to make it on your own before you see how stupid you are.

If you're dumb enough to run away, you deserve whatever happens to you.

Do you know how embarrassing that would be for me, to be the only one in this neighbourhood that has a child that runs away?

Constance hadn't thought about it. She knew she had no money of her own except for the spare change in her piggy bank. Her mother bought everything. She had nowhere to go, as Seth's family couldn't afford another mouth to feed, and she didn't know how to get to Lauretta's apartment without taking a lot of subway lines, which required money. Lauretta would probably lose her job if she helped Constance. She hadn't thought about it. She had just run, because the threats her mother made about never letting her talk to Seth again or being grounded for the whole summer or them moving away, just the two of them, was too much to bear. She thought about her father, who sat there like a sack of potatoes all the time, eyes flicking back and forth helplessly between Constance and her mother like watching a doomed tennis match. No. It wasn't helpless. He deliberately was passive, passive in her life and in his own, passive and spineless and weak.

She squatted among starving reeds and stuck two fingers into the soft mud. It was a pleasant feeling, fulfilling some absent childhood need.

Maybe her mother wouldn't look for her. Maybe she would and then forget, or decide that life was just fine without Constance in it. No. It would be nice, but she knew her mother. Out of obligation to the concerned neighbourhood and the police, she would pretend to care where her daughter went. She would only mourn after precisely one year.

Constance thought about it, and as she was thinking about it, it fell dark.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a fine afternoon, with a breeze blowing through Oxskull like it had just been opened to the rest of the world. It was perfectly noon and the townspeople went about their business. Dell should have been going about his business. It was just the small, minor, simple thing that he could not force himself to get out of the chair he was like stone in on Lawrence's store's porch, practically welded to it, one eye rolling behind his goggle to get better peripheral vision through the window. Dell didn't hear Lawrence step out onto the porch and regard him, phone receiver clutched in hand. The shopkeeper looked at him, clammy and pale, fingers tapping a grave into his knee.

"Dell. I've just gotten off the phone with the sheriff."

"And?"

"There's been other things around Oxskull missing. Don't you worry, they're going to talk to Marie and the boys this evening."

Lawrence waited for the slouch of relief. It didn't come.

"It should be all okay, now. Don't worry." he said again, as a few gnats buzzed over Dell's head.

"I should be getting home. Left a mess, looking for them."

He'd been wracking his brain nonstop for who it could have been. Dell had firmly decided it was impossible for the boys to know themselves what the blueprints meant. He had taken all the working prototypes he had and put them under his bed. Someone else must have paid them off to take them, with careful directions. When he was completing his eighth PhD there had been a break-in to one of his fellow graduate's homes, and valuable things were taken. Dell had heard they'd recently turned down a few offers for work and went to a different company instead. It made him sweat. How many letters and calls had he not returned from companies that he had no idea of their real intention, of how much fine print he would sign that any invention of their employees' became theirs?

There was no way to know. It made his throat sore.

* * *

It must have been about six in the evening when his eyes snapped open, instantly attuned to the sounds that were coming from the barn. Rustling. Moving. With a dry mouth and roiling stomach Dell retrieved his shotgun strapped over the empty fireplace and made his way carefully outside. He must have fallen asleep in his recliner, like a foolish old man. Well. The wool wasn't pulled over his eyes anymore. Dell licked his lips and reached out with one hand to pull the barn door open, shotgun braced against his chest. He felt a wild sort of desperation when there was no pallid face staring back at him, caught red-handed. He had _heard it_. He wasn't insane. He advanced into the barn, quickly, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the still-closed blueprints cabinet. Closed and locked. _What?_

A skittering, crashing noise, and commotion as a scrap bin budged and things were knocked over inside of it. Shaken, Dell fired the shotgun, spraying bullets into the dirt, right as a dirty orange tabby burst out of the bin and yowled, flying at lightspeed out of the barn. He sat there for a minute, hand over his heart. This was it, wasn't it? The decline of his great mind into paranoia. This was what he'd become. He almost shot a goddamn cat.

* * *

Dell had taken down the clock. He worked in a sort of damned frenzy, ignoring the pain that blossomed in his bent back. A bright burst of light here and there as he welded. Off-rhythm beeping. A screen coming to life. The dust settled in the lines in his face misted down as Dell cracked a smile. There. It was done. A motion-sensor with a set of discreet beepers for around the house if it went off. He could finally get some goddamned rest.

That evening, he sat in the recliner with a cold beer, surveying his land like a fat kind. The beeper placed above the fireplace just below the shotgun was reassuringly silent. Outside, the electrified fence cracked like a whip to life.


	10. Chapter 10

Constance didn't know what to expect.

It was a sort of very-important-person situation, whistling along in the back of an ambulance, cars pulling over to the side of the road to let them pass. She had never gotten somewhere so quickly before without her mother's cursing out of other drivers and swerving. There was a possibility her mother may never curse again. Constance didn't know what would happen next. She didn't know how they would treat her-she looked like a child, in her ruffled and stained pink skirt. Maybe they would treat her like fine china. But hadn't she crossed the threshold of porcelain? She saw it, in the newspapers, where there was a certain point that they tried you as an adult and didn't hide your name and stopped pretending like you were a little kid and put you in an adult prison. Where was the line, had she crossed it? Was she beyond porcelain and onto stone?

An hour or two later. The policeman had bought her a sticky blueberry muffin and some hot chocolate from the cafeteria. He stood with his hand on the side of her bed. It was the first time she'd been in a hospital, and it was scarier than she ever thought simply going to the hospital could be. They had gone through the emergency room, where ambulances go, and she had seen a nurse with her fingers around a man's neck and red, red blood squirting out from underneath her hand. Lots of shouting. Code words. Were there code words for _you're going to prison_? The policeman had been with her in the ambulance. The policeman had followed them into a room in the emergency center where they examined her, and poked her leg. A crispy smell filled the room, and the acrid stench of burnt hair. They told him to leave. He raised a hand to his lips and talked to one of the nurses in a low voice. They didn't ask him to leave again.

"Don't push it," said the night nurse, who was a portly woman with an accusing gaze. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes and that's all the time you've got for today."

Her arm was stinging a little from the needle in it. Constance rolled her head back and forth on the soft pillow. The policeman didn't say anything at first.

"Your father is on his way, Constance."

Her left leg was twice the size of the right one, with all of the gauze and bandages on it. The night nurse poked her head back in. "Call for you."

She closed her eyes for a minute and then he was back. "The maid on shift at your home said that your father is in the middle of something and can't make it for a few hours. She's offering to come instead. Would you like that?"

"Yes."

"Do you feel up to answering some questions for me?"

"Is my mother fine?"

Constance really asked because she knew she should. She was thinking about honey-soaked cornbread, and the color of the sun on Earth, blossoming orange and red like a sunset over the horizon.

"She's in the intensive care unit right now. I will keep you updated, all right?"

She closed her eyes and did not open them again.

* * *

Pressure, on her chest. Constance opened her eyes. There were fewer nurses in the hallway, and a head of hair rose to reveal shining eyes.

"Oh, Constance," Lauretta said softly. She reached below Constance's chin. "I promise, when you're out of here, I'll take you for a really nice haircut and ice cream."

Some of the burnt hair flaked off onto Lauretta's fingers.

"Haircut?"

"Your hair was burnt in the accident." Lauretta told her quietly. "And your leg."

 _Accident._ Constance pondered the word.

"Don't worry about anything. You'll look so cute with shorter hair, and your leg will heal up fine, I'm sure. A plastic surgeon is coming to visit you today to look at your leg. Realistically, you might have some scars. But it's okay. It's fine. Don't worry. It could have been so much worse."

"My mother?"

"Catherine is still in the ICU."

"What happened?"

"To her? Oh, I'm not sure if I should be the one telling you this."

Constance thumped her hand a few times on the bed insistently.

"She...she was burnt, very badly, much worse than you. A lot of smoke and things got down her throat and lungs, so she can't talk very well right now. The bottom part of her face and her chest and arms are...not so good. I went to see her when you were sleeping, after I got here. Your father is with her. Don't worry. Constance, please, tell me what happened. The police are wanting to ask me questions, and I don't know what to tell them. You can talk to me."

The truth, she thought, was hotter than any fire.

"No."

Lauretta controlled her face.

"You'll have to talk to the police. Someone. If you talk to me, I can help you with what to say."

"You won't like me anymore."

"Constance. There are things that could make me not like you. But I love you. You're my friend. Love doesn't go away so easily. It sticks around after things like this. I wish I could talk to the police for you, but you must. Let me help you."

"Okay," Constance said, and swallowed.

 _It was dark, and she had been running through grass and fallen branches, tripping once or twice. Her breath was coming out of her chest like someone crushing an accordion._

" _Constance!" her mother shrieked like a banshee from the road._

 _Her skirt was stained and ripped and she was clutching a plastic bottle of gasoline. Its smell was filling her nose, acrid and horrible and it was probably letting her mother follow her. But she didn't let go because every time her mother got a little too close Constance squirted it at her feet and her mother backed off. Gasoline on her mother's nice shoes would not come off._

 _She'd been given the gasoline by the old, toothless woman, who told her it was for the bonfire tonight. It was certainly night. She had awoken from her sleep like she'd been slapped, the sound of her mother's breath whistling between clenched teeth like icewater on her head._

 _There was the bonfire, in an alleyway sharply to her left. It was sun on Earth, blossoming yellow and orange and red, hot on her face as she got closer._

" _CONSTANCE!"_

 _Past the fire, the dark alley wall looming up in front of her out of the night barely ten feet from the old oil drum. No one was there. It was still early, the fire gathering strength. She whipped her head back and forth. Surrounded. Her mother's heels, coming up behind her. They stopped before the fire._

" _You little bitch. Get back here, I can't believe you. I'm going to lock you in the attic for the rest of the summer-"_

 _A horrible, sweltering rage was making her ears feel like they were stuffed with cotton. Her hands were working on their own and they squeezed the bottle. On autopilot, into the fire, the stream arcing over and at her mother's face, the fire leaping up to lick it and the whole thing a giant tongue of flame into her mouth. A terrible, bloodcurdling, raw screaming, and that sound was worse than anything she'd ever heard. Constance panicked. She bolted towards her mother and her shoe caught on a rock. Falling, falling, her shoulder slamming into the barrel. The whole thing tipping over, fire on the ground, fire catching on gasoline, and Constance could only think to jerk her head up and away from the fire. She was on her side, one leg on the ground, and before she blacked out she stared at the smoke coming from her mother's mouth._


	11. Chapter 11

Dell slept like a corpse. He'd gotten used to the howling of the coyotes and other sounds that came with slightly being in the middle of nowhere. New was the motion sensor and his shotgun above the headboard, his bona fide melatonin. The sensor was blissfully silent all night. He was waiting on the porch with some iced tea, drumming his fingers on his knee, when the sheriff pulled up to his property. Dell set his drink down, ice clinking in the glass like windchimes, and dusted himself off to meet him.

"You look rested," the man commented kindly, stepping down from the truck cabin. The sheriff was a tall, lanky man with a pressed uniform and deep laugh lines Dell could see around his sunglasses.

"Am."

"I don't think we've been properly introduced. Name's Will. Been the sheriff here for about thirty-five years. Lovely house you've got here, Mr. Conagher."

"Thank you. Please, call me Dell."

The sheriff nodded and took off his sunglasses, the genuine smile on his face sagging. "I'll cut to the chase, Dell. I didn't find anything at Marie's. Practically begged me to look around her house, couldn't believe her boys weren't reformed after their stint. They're no angels, but I have to admit, I think they've learned their lesson."

The back of his neck was itching something fierce. Dell's lips were dry.

"Sheriff? May I be candid with you? I think there's more going on here."

"Is that so?"

"My work that was taken is gibberish to the common man. No offense meant. To know what it means, its true value-I suspect someone paid them to do it."

"None taken. I hear you, Dell, but I don't know what to tell you. Unless you have some evidence."

"No. No, I don't. Just sense," he curtly finished, and turned back towards his house.

He spent the rest of his day's work wallowing in irritation. Did he have to go over there his damn self and confront those kids? Maybe. But the sheriff was right. Without any evidence, they'd probably throw him in jail for harassment. He wished he could talk to his mother. The sun was high in the sky when he heard a truck roll up, spitting gravel every which way. Dell put down his wrench and left the barn, one hand over his eyes.

Will, the sheriff, stepped down from his truck cabin.

"Hello, Mr. Conagher. I apologize it took me so long to get over here."

"Call me Dell." he said.

"Sure. I'll get to the point. I went to see Marie-"

"Again?" Dell asked, confusion creasing his brow. "Is there new information?"

A moment passed between them then, long shadows cast from the brim of the sheriff's hat to the bottom of his sunglasses. A very strange expression came over Will's face for an instant, something writhing under his skin like a snake shedding its skin, and then it cleared.

"You must forgive me for repeating myself."

"It's no problem, sheriff."

Will gave a nod. "Sorry to bother you. Must be losing my mind, driving all around town for a second time!"

"It's no problem. Glad everything is all right."

"See you later, Dell."

He was left standing there while Will's truck chewed up gravel on his way out, and wondered where the conversation would have gone if he hadn't said anything. Dell's gaze stayed on the pickup until the sheriff was out of sight, only a dust cloud on the horizon like a snuffed-out cigarette.


	12. Chapter 12

The house was a tomb, a proper mausoleum, an altar to death. It had never felt like home to Constance, instead rather like a train station, where she passed through nonchalantly on her way to other things.

It felt worse now.

She passed through the living room-the _family_ room, as some called it, and traced her fingertips along a marble bust that had a small chip on the backside. It was eerily quiet, made worse by the fact it was the silence that came when people were tiptoeing around. Constance loved the vacuum when her mother wasn't home, the absence of sound only interrupted by the small noises of laughter and murmurs of talking from the staff cleaning and cooking. Her father had been locked the master bedroom all day, with his lawyer secured in the study, and Lauretta was the only one that seemed to have time for her. Except for now, of course, she was busy trying not to get the staff to commit mutiny. There had been strict instructions from Constance's mother's doctors for absolute quiet so she could get as much sleep as possible, and so they were having their meeting in the kitchen with tea towels stuffed under the doorframe, the furthest away from the master bedroom they could be. Every few minutes Constance ghosted to the dining room and pressed her ear up against the door to catch frantic, hushed snippets of conversation.

"This house has the devil in it," someone said.

It was all becoming a little much. Constance understood that. She had realized rather passively that there was nothing she could do to make people like her, or understand what had happened. It didn't help that she didn't understand it herself. She had definitely said _something_ to the police, and to the psychiatrist, and it made sense at the time but it didn't now. It was fragmented, supplemented by words people gave to her. _Abuse. Self-defense._ She had run away. She couldn't even remember what had tipped the scale. It seemed so unimportant; was it worth all this? The words of the night nurse floated into her head. _Bet that was the last straw, wasn't it?_ She couldn't remember. She had run away, over something, run to a homeless camp where she thought stupidly she could somehow recognize Seth's uncle whom she had never met nor seen a picture of. There was going to be a big bonfire and she was going to be included. Constance tried and failed to recover that feeling. It was fleeting, the feeling of being wanted. It was one of the first times she had been kindly included in something. She had the gasoline, and her mother found her somehow. How? She was running, scared, like a gazelle from a lion.

She was trying to not remember what followed. Absently, her fingers ghosted by her leg.

It was all becoming a little much for everyone. The staff walked on eggshells around her and dissonance hummed in the air like a microwave. Lauretta had deep bags under her eyes and conversed with the special nurses that tended to Constance's mother in a soft, low voice. It was all becoming a little much for her, too. She was in a state of limbo. Constance had only had a brief word from her father to wait until he was finished settling affairs and hospital bills, so wait she did. She wasn't in prison. She wasn't sure if she had come close at any point. Whatever Lauretta had told her to say had kept her out of trouble but in with many psychiatrists. Lauretta hadn't taken her for her haircut yet. The psychiatrists had asked her many questions, mostly about her mother and how she felt about her mother, and there was a lot of hemming and hawing and then she never heard anything back. She hadn't talked to Seth. The phones in the house had been moved to the study.

Constance stood at the big window in the dining room and felt the sun on her cheeks.

A phone trilling faintly in the kitchen. A minute later and Lauretta edged out over the tea towels, coming up behind her with a new and permanent crease in her brow.

"Constance," she said very softly, "Your father is ready to talk to you. Please go up to your bedroom."

A chill cascaded down her back. "She's up there."

"Yes." Lauretta said after a long pause. "Yes, she is."

"Do I have to-"

"Of course not. Just wait in your room."

Constance wanted to say more, as Lauretta walked away, but something held her tongue in her mouth. Maybe it was the dark circles under her eyes, or the laugh lines that hadn't been used in ages. It was her, after all, causing this trouble. It was because of her that everyone was rushing around and the house was so quiet.

She went upstairs and placed herself on the edge of her bed.

Her father did not come.

Constance waited some more.

Her father did not come.

She held her own hand and rose from the quilt, padding softly down the hall. The door to her father's study was still shut and the only nose was the soft beeping of the machines in the master bedroom. As Constance approached the rolling emotion in her stomach fought harder and harder to spill out of her throat. There was a emaciated thing laying in the bed, a creature that used to be her mother who was damned to lay there on a respirator and wonder if she would ever use her ravaged throat and lungs on her own again. The sheets were draped up to her collarbones, and Constance's heart fell still for a moment when one wide eye opened, swung around the room like a laser, and settled on her.

Constance was frozen for a minute, like she had felt in the alleyway, rooted to the spot like she'd been glued. Her mother's eye seemed to quake with rage in its socket, and a pathetic hissing noise rose from the bed, something she wasn't sure belonged to the respirator or her mother.

Her father was asleep in his chair next to the bed. Constance's eyes flicked back and forth from him and her mother as she advanced. The hissing peaked and then broke like snow falling off a mountain, there was a liquidy cough and then silence again.

"Constance," her father said, surprised, and she jumped. "Let's talk in your room."

It was later that she realized the conversation they had on her bed was the longest she had ever had with her father, and it would be the last time they spoke more than a few words to each other for the rest of her life. It struck her that he was just as confused as she was, then, sitting and wringing his hands. Constance sat with a straight back. The man next to her could have been a stranger.

"Constance, I...I wanted to say I was sorry."

She blinked.

"I had no idea you felt like you were being abused. Your mother has a very special way of showing that she cares, and I know she can be hard on you, but it's because she cares. You know that, right? Abuse is a very strong _adult_ word, honey. All these psychiatrists and lawyers are up in a flurry about it. I've been trying to tell them that's not what you meant. All the same, with your mother...like she is, I guess I'll be your parent now."

A bird chirped faintly from somewhere in the courtyard.

"Honey, I don't understand why you felt the need to run away when your mother gave you everything, but I understand you don't feel like talking. That's okay." A few beads of sweat rolled down her father's pale cheek. "Or why you...did that. If it was an accident or not. I'd really rather not know," he said, mostly to himself. "What matters is, I'm going to tell you how things will be. The psychiatrists can't tell me what you talked about, all of it, but I know you're not in any trouble. You wouldn't understand the terms they used, but Constance, something is wrong in your brain. Normal children don't hurt their loving parents. They know it wasn't with...you know, the intent to seriously hurt your mother, but something in your brain was making you feel like you had to lash out. All of this is going to go away. Don't worry, all right?"

 _Don't worry_. Constance closed her eyes. She felt a summer with Lauretta and Seth on her fingertips, sunlight flooding her cheeks and sticky cornbread on her lips. She would tiptoe past the hiss of the respirator and the rolling eye with the knowledge her mother would probably never speak again, never tell the truth. Constance did know in that instant what the truth was, as her father put it so delicately, sweating through his starched shirt. She had intended to hurt her mother, the creature pushing her into a corner with a rake. Something had snapped, and she was still a little fearful about whatever it was that had caused that rage. By some godlike grace she was skidding along imprisoned, and would finally have a chance to-

"Under one condition."

Her heart stilled.

"The court thinks it's a good idea for you to have a change of environment."

"What does that mean."

"You're going to boarding school. In Washington. I know it's far, but it's one of the best private schools in the nation. You'll be away from your mother, this house, your school. It will be a fresh start, all right?"

Constance gazed at the weak chin of her father and wished for the taste of honey.


End file.
